Legal Activity » Legal Advocacy » Following petition filed by Gisha, a cancer patient from East Jerusalem traveled to Gaza to visit her mother and siblings, despite “failing” to meet Israel’s narrow criteria for travel to Gaza

Following petition filed by Gisha, a cancer patient from East Jerusalem traveled to Gaza to visit her mother and siblings, despite “failing” to meet Israel’s narrow criteria for travel to Gaza

On April 15, 2018, Gisha filed a High Court petition (Hebrew) on behalf of Saadah Hasunah, a cancer patient and permanent resident of East Jerusalem. Saadah’s request to visit her mother and siblings in Gaza had been rejected by Israel.

Israel denies all travel to and from Gaza other than in rare cases in which permit applicants meet the narrow criteria put in place by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). The limited criteria include visits to a first-degree relative who suffers from a life-threatening medical condition, in which case a person is eligible to apply for a permit to visit their sick relative (be it in Gaza, Israel, or the West Bank). Absurdly, the sick relatives themselves do not meet Israel’s criteria for eligibility to apply for a travel permit. The petitioner’s application was therefore denied by Israel for ostensibly “failing to meet the criteria.”

In the petition, Gisha argued that even if the petitioner’s case does not meet Israel’s fixed criteria, the respondents do have general discretionary powers that would allow them to approve the application; that they are obligated to examine each individual permit application based on its merits and use discretion accordingly, which they did not do in the petitioner’s case. The petition also emphasized the fact that the petitioner’s mother was herself in poor health, which prevents her from traveling out of Gaza to visit her daughter. Yet, in their preliminary response (Hebrew), the respondents persisted in their refusal to allow the petitioner to enter Gaza to visit her family. Counsel for the state reasserted this position during the hearing on the petition, held on May 2, 2018.

During the hearing, Justices Sohlberg, Mintz and Willner issued a decision (Hebrew) whereby the state would reconsider the petitioner’s application once she provided a document attesting to the fact that her mother’s medical condition precludes her from traveling to visit her daughter. The petitioner subsequently submitted the documents with respect to her mother, and her travel application was approved (Hebrew). Although the judgment (Hebrew) itself reflects the court’s adoption of Israel’s restrictive policy, as it has done countless times in the past, the petitioner’s application was, in fact, considered individually and ultimately approved, following Gisha’s petition.